The effect on Mary Stuart was overwhelming. Something wholly new invaded her life like a thunderclap. In taking possession of her body, Bothwell had also raped her soul. Both of her husbands, the fifteen-year-old boy Francis II and the beardless Darnley, had lacked virility; they had been weaklings. In her experience of sexual relations Mary had hitherto bestowed herself magnanimously, to confer pleasure on her partner, remaining mistress and Queen even in this intimate sphere; she had never played the passive role, had never been possessed by force. In this encounter with Bothwell, which left her amazed senses tingling with surprise, she came for the first time into close contact with the primitive male, one who trampled upon her femininity, her modesty, her pride, her sense of security, and therewith he caused a voluptuous uprush from a universe within herself hitherto unsuspected. Before she realised the danger and before she even thought of warding it off, she had already been conquered. This taking of her body by storm gave vent to a geyser of feeling—of feeling which, in the first moment of alarm, may have been dominated by wrath, by fierce hatred of the ruffian who had thus brutally ravaged her womanly pride. But it is one of the profoundest mysteries of our composite souls, as we find in external nature, that extremes meet, and especially in the realm of feeling. The skin cannot distinguish between intense heat and intense cold; frost can burn like fire. A woman may pass in one moment from hatred into love, from mortified pride to uttermost humility; she may desire and affirm with all the wealth of her body that which, a moment before, she has repudiated and regarded with loathing.
The upshot in the present case was that, henceforward, a woman who had been tolerably reflective was consumed by an inner fire. What had hitherto been the pillars sustaining her life (honour, dignity, repute, pride, self-confidence and reason) collapsed. Having once plunged into deep waters, she wished for nothing better than to sink in them. A new and strange voluptuousness seized upon her. Avid and intoxicated, Mary wished to enjoy so novel a sensation at the cost of self-destruction. Humbly she kissed the hand of the man who had annihilated her womanly pride and had taught her the ecstasy of self-surrender.
This passion was something immeasurably vaster than her fondness for Darnley. With Darnley she had played at self-surrender; now it had become deadly earnest. With Darn-ley she had merely wanted to share the crown, her sovereign authority, her life. To Bothwell she wished to give, not this, that or the other, but all that she had on earth, impoverishing herself to enrich him, lustfully debasing herself from her high estate in order to uplift him to the skies. With an unwonted thrill, Mary flung aside restraints, that she might seize and hold him who had become for her the only man in the world. She knew that her friends would forsake her, that people in general would revile her and look upon her with contempt. But these realities gave her another pride in place of that which had been shattered, and she enthusiastically proclaimed the fact:
Pour luy depuis iay mesprise l’honneur
Ce qui nous peut seul prouoir de bonheur.
Pour luy iay hasarde grandeur et conscience.
Pour luy tous mes parents i’ay quiste, et amys,
Et tous aultres respects sont apart mis …
Pour luy tous mes amys i’estime moins que rien …
le veux pour luy au monde renoncer:
le veux mourire pour luy faire auancer …
Pour luy ie veux rechercher la grandeure,
Et faire tant qu’en vray connoistra,
Que ie n’ay bien, heur, ni contentement,
Qu’a l’obeyr et servir loyammant.
Pour luy i’attendz toute bonne fortune.
Pour luy ie veux guarder santé et vie …
(For him since then I have despised honour, which alone can provide us with happiness. For him I have risked dignity and conscience, for him I have forsaken all my relatives and friends, and all other considerations have been put aside … For his sake I have come to regard my friends as less than nothing … For his sake I would fain renounce the world, I would gladly die that he might rise … For him alone I wish to be great, and I shall so behave that he will recognise that I have neither well-being nor luck nor contentment than in obeying and serving him loyally. I hope for him nothing but good fortune. For his sake I wish to retain health and life …) Unduly tensed feelings affect the mind profoundly. Storms of passion liberate unfamiliar and unique energies in women such as Mary, who had hitherto been reserved and indifferent. During these weeks her mental and bodily life seemed multiplied tenfold, and she showed capabilities she had never shown before nor was ever to show again. She spent eighteen hours in the saddle, and then sat up nearly all night writing letters. Though as poetess she had hitherto composed no more than brief epigrams and casual fragments of verse, under the stimulus of fresh inspiration she penned the sonnet cycle in which her pleasures and her pains were manifested with wonderful command of language. Ordinarily incautious, at this time she concealed her sentiments most effectively, with the result that for months none suspected her intimacy with Bothwell. His lightest touch made her senses reel, yet before the eyes of the world she addressed him as calmly as any other subordinate; she preserved a cheerful mien while her nerves were twitching and her mind was filled with despair. A demonic superego took possession of her, lending her a strength which far transcended her natural powers.
But these achievements had to be paid for by a terrible collapse. When this ensued, day after day she remained in bed, utterly exhausted; or else she wandered for hours from room to room in a state of partial stupefaction, sobbing and groaning, exclaiming “je voudrais être morte”—I would like to be dead—clamouring for a knife with which to stab herself. Thus her vitality would wane as strangely as it came to her rescue again.
Nothing can show more plainly than does the famous Jedburgh episode how much her body had been exhausted by the frenzy of passion. On 7th October 1566, in an affray with a border brigand, Bothwell was dangerously wounded. The news reached Mary on her way to the town, where she was about to hold an assize. Though her first impulse was to ride forthwith to Hermitage, twenty-five miles away, she restrained the impulse lest such behaviour should arouse remark. There can be no doubt, however, that she was profoundly distressed by the tidings, for du Croc, the French ambassador (who was the most dispassionate observer in her entourage, and who could not as yet have had an inkling of her liaison with Bothwell), reported to Paris: “Ce ne luy eust esté peu de perte de le perdre”—To lose him would have been no small loss to her. Lethington too noticed how absent-minded she was but, being equally ignorant of the true state of affairs, he opined that her “thought and displeasure had their root in the King.”
Not until a week had elapsed and the assize was over did the Queen ride over to Hermitage Castle accompanied by Moray and others of her lords. She spent two hours by the wounded man’s bedside and rode back to Jedburgh the same afternoon. On dismounting, she fell into a faint which lasted two hours. Thereafter she was feverish and delirious. Then her body suddenly stiffened; she neither saw nor felt anything. Her courtiers and the doctor stood round, contemplating her with alarm. Messengers were sent in all directions to fetch the King and the bishop—the latter to administer extreme unction. For a week Mary hovered between life and death, since seemingly her secret wish to die had sapped her vital forces. What shows, however, that the collapse was mental rather than physical, that it was, indeed, a characteristic hysterical attack, is the fact that as soon as Bothwell, now regaining health and strength, was brought to Jedburgh in a horse litter, the Queen took a turn for the better and, a fortnight after her suite had supposed her to be dying, she was well enough to be in the saddle once more. Danger had threatened her from within, and from within it had been overcome.
Though restored in body, for the next few weeks the Queen was much distraught in mind. Comparative strangers noticed that she had become “a different person”. Something in her aspect and her manner underwent modification; her usual levity and self-confidence vanished. Her demeanour was
that of one sorely afflicted. She shut herself up in her room, and through the closed door her ladies could hear her sobbing. But though it was her custom to be frank and outspoken, on this occasion she confided in no one. Her lips remained closed, and none guessed the secret which burdened her mind by day and by night
A terrible feature of Mary’s infatuation for Bothwell, that which made it at once splendid and gruesome, was that from the first the Queen must have known her love to be sinful, and disastrous to the plans she had most at heart. Her awakening from the first embrace must have been like that of Tristan and Iseult from the effects of the love potion, when they recalled that they were not living by themselves in the infinite realm of love, but were bound to this world by numerous ties and duties. So Mary probably realised her situation. She who had given herself to Bothwell was another man’s wife, and Both-well another woman’s husband. This was a twofold adultery into which the turmoil of the senses had led her. How long was it—two weeks, or three, or four—since she herself, Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles, had signed and issued an edict declaring adultery and every form of illicit lust to be capital offences? From the outset her insane passion was, therefore, branded as a crime. Having committed a crime, she could save herself from punishment only by further criminal offences. If ever she and Bothwell were to be wedded, she would have forcibly to rid herself of her husband, and Bothwell to divorce his wife. This love plant could bear none but poisoned fruit. In so desperate a plight, Mary’s courage rallied though she realised that she would never again enjoy peace of mind and knew that henceforward she was past saving. As always, her intrepid nature came to her aid, were it no more than an endeavour to try vain hazards and to challenge fate. She refused to draw back like a coward; she would not draw back; she would, with head erect, march forward to the abyss. Though she should lose all, there would be joy in her torment, since she would lose all for her lover’s sake.
Entre ses mains et en son plein pouuoir,
le metz mon filz, mon honneur, et ma vie,
Mon pais, mes subjects, mon âme assubiectié
Est toute à luy, et n’ay autre vouloir
Pour mon obiect que sens le disseuoir
Suiure ie veux malgri toute l’enuie
Qu’issir en peult …
(Into his hands and into his full power I put my son, my honour, and my life, my country, and my subjects; my subjugated heart is his alone; and I have no other wish in life than, without deceiving him, to follow him, despite all the troubles that may result …) “Despite all the troubles”! Though it be a thousand times a crime she means to follow the path which leads nowhere. Having given herself wholly, body, soul and destiny, to the man she loved so abjectly, the only thing that remains to be dreaded is that she may lose him.
The most obnoxious feature of her situation, the utmost extremity of her torment, remains to be told. Mad folly notwithstanding, Mary Stuart was too shrewd not to recognise that she had once more given herself in vain, that the man towards whom her whole being turned did not really love her. Bothwell had possessed her, as he had possessed many another wench, sensually, swiftly and brutally. He was as ready to leave her in the lurch as he had been ready to leave other women when the hot fit was over. For him, the rape of Mary Stuart had been no more than a passing adventure. In her despairing verses she discloses her knowledge that the man who had worshipped her body for a fleeting moment did not love her mind.
Vous m’estimes legier je le voy,
Et si n’avez en moy nul asseurance,
Et soubçonnes mon coeur sans apparance,
Vous deffiant à trop grande tort de moy.
Vous ignores l’amour que ie vous porte;
Vous soubçonnez qu’autre amour me transporte,
Vous estimes mes parolles du vent,
Vous depeignes de cire mon las coeur
Vous me penses femme sans iugement;
Et tout cela augmente mon ardeur.
(I see that you esteem me inconstant, and have no faith in me, and suspect my heart without just cause, suspecting me to my own detriment. You do not realise the love I bear you; you suspect that another love is carrying me away, my words you look upon as light as wind, you picture my tired heart as though of wax, you think me a woman lacking in judgement, and all this does but intensify my love.) Instead of turning away proudly from her unappreciative lover, instead of exercising a modicum of self-control, Mary, carried away as she was by passion, flung herself on her knees before the indifferent Bothwell, in the hope of retaining him. Painful was the way in which her previous arrogance was now replaced by self-abasement. She implored, she supplicated, she extolled her own merits, offering herself to her lover, to the man who would not love her, after the manner of a salesman making the most of his goods. So completely had she lost all sense of personal dignity that she, who had once been queenly and self-reliant, retailed to him like a chaffering market woman the sacrifices she had made for him, and went on to emphasise her submissiveness.
Car c’est le seul desir de vostre chere amye,
De vous seruir et loyaument aymer,
Et tous malheurs moins que riens estimer,
Et vostre volunté de la mien suiure.
Vous conoistres avecques obeissance
De mon loyal deuoir n’omettant la science
A quoy i’estudiray pour tousiours vous complaire
Sans aymer rien que vous, soubs la suiection
De qui ie veux sens nulle fiction
Viure et mourir …
(For it is your beloved’s sole desire, to serve you and love you faithfully, and to count all misfortunes as less than nothing, and to place your will before mine own. You will know how obediently never forgetting my duty I shall study to please you always loving none but you, under whose guidance I wish, without any reserves to live and die …) With consternation we recognise the disappearance of the self-assertive impulse in a young woman who has hitherto been afraid of no sovereign ruler in the world and of no earthly peril, and who now debases herself by exhibiting a most shameful and spiteful jealousy. Bothwell must have given Mary cause to believe that he was more attached to the wife whom she had provided for him than he was to herself, and that he had no inclination to desert his wife for the Queen. Now, therefore (is it not horrible that a great love can make a woman so paltry?), she proceeded to disparage Lady Bothwell in the most ignoble and malicious way. She tried to stimulate his erotic masculine vanity by telling him that his wife did not show enough ardour when in his embraces. The gossip must have been passed on to her by some intimate of the Bothwell household. “Quant vous l’aymez, elle usoit de froi-deur”—When you made love to her, she showed coldness—she writes, implying that Lady Bothwell surrendered herself hesitatingly, frigidly, instead of with the warmth of true passion. In contemptible self-praise, she tells him how much she, the adulteress, is sacrificing for Bothwell, whereas his wife reaps advantages and pleasure from his greatness. Let him stay then with herself alone, not allowing himself to be humbugged by the letters and tears and conjurations of that “false” woman.
Et maintenant elle commence à voire
Qu’elle estoit bien de mauuais iugement
De n’estimer l’amour d’vn tel amant
Et vouldroit bien mon amy desseuoir,
Par les escripts tout fardes de scauoir …
Et toutesfois ses parolles fardez,
Ses pleurs, ses plaints remplis de fictions,
Et ses hautes cris et lamentations
Ont tant guagné que par vous sont guardes
Ses lettres escriptes ausquells vous donnez foy
Et si l’aymes et croyez plus que moy.
(Now she begins to see that she has made a great mistake in not valuing the love of such a lover and would gladly deceive you, my beloved, by writing letters stuffed with knowledge … nevertheless, her inflated words, her tears, her fictitious plaints, her loud cries and lamentations, have so won you over that you have kept her letters, in which you believe,
and thus you love her and trust her more than me.) More and more despairing do her cries become. She is the only woman worthy of his love; he must not forsake her for an unworthy wife. He must put away this creature and unite his lot with that of his Queen and lover who is ready to walk beside him whatsoever may befall, through life and into the very jaws of death. Mary implores Bothwell to ask what proof he will of her everlasting devotion, for she is prepared to sacrifice all—house, home, possessions, crown, honour and child. Let him take everything from her, so long as he keeps her who has wholly given herself to him, body, soul and destiny.